"And then God created... you. The little... hairless apes. And then He asked all of us to bow down before you. To love you more than Him. And I said 'Father! I can't!' I said 'These humans beings are flawed. Murderous!'

Examples:

"We will change. Because we can change, I know it. We may be weak, but we just have to be; if not, then we wouldnít have any reason to grow, to get strong. I know that it may seem futile to you, but itís not, because we are getting stronger with every step we take. You see Iím sure we can change! Because weíre weak, and because we die. We have to fight in order to live, and thatís what will make us strong."

This seems to be the best way to sum up the philosophies of the main characters in the 2003 anime version. They've all done things they aren't proud of, but seem to take a "humans are inherently flawed, but all we can do is the best we can" approach to their struggles.

Monster is largely about this. Tenma and Johan come to different conclusions from this premise.

While Sora No Woto ends on a fairly ambiguous note, Rio's ending narration works toward this trope.

Rio:Yeah...even if the world is going to end someday, until then, all that we have here with us is our future.

This is discussed in Black Butler, by Ciel and Sebastian shortly after Ciel has ordered the murder of a large number of children. Ciel degrades humans for being weak and fundamentally evil and curses himself for being one, but Sebastian notes that it is this constant struggle and their lofty goals that makes them interesting.

Berserk really blurs the line between this and Humans Are Bastards. On one hand, immorality, debauchery, violence, and corruption are a common occurence, to the point where humans are easily capable of transforming into hideous demons by sacrificing those they care for the most (and nearly all have taken the deal when it was offered). However, there are points where one can also see the goodness of humanity at work.

A good example is Guts himself. Early chapters painted him as a very dark and cynical character who is driven by anger and Revenge. However, Character Development has instill in him a strong desire to protect those he cares about, and he's proven time and again that he will never abandon or betray them. Despite everything the guy has gone through, he's still able to find reason to trust those close to him.

A major theme of Attack on Titan, exploring how humanity deals with extreme circumstances like famine, land shortages, floods of refugees, and of course giant monsters that want to eat them.

Comic Books

Transmetropolitan. A lot. Especially towards the end, where Spider constantly drops that, despite being a bastard and some sort of weird figure for the masses, he's still human like everyone else, along with all the great and the extra-evil that humanity does on a daily basis.

This is one possible message of Watchmen: Because humans are flawed, our heroes will be as well, and thus our longing for perfect messianic figures to 'save us' is naive.

In Supergod, Morrigan Lugus claims that the very concept of "God" is flawed because it was formed by "stupid monkeys" who need religion like junkies need their stash.

Fan Fiction

In Perfection Is Overrated, a large part of the plot involves the characters of Mai-HiME dealing with their personal problems, with the point being that by being imperfect and having to struggle against their flaws and improve themselves, they are stronger people than the "perfect" SUEs, who remain complacent.

This is a central theme in the Yellowstone continuity of The Conversion Bureau. Before the start of the adventure, Celestia warns Twilight Sparkle that humans are savage creatures. By the end, Twilight does admit that humans can be harsh, but only because Earth is far more unforgiving than Equestria. It's for this reason that she comes to the conclusion that while humans most certainly aren't perfect, they generally try to do good more often than not, and that the humans who are just plain evil are the exception. Celestia turns out to agree with her.

A similar theme comes up in The Conversion Bureau: The Other Side of the Spectrum - humanity's sheer savagery in the ways of war is extensively explored, and it's clear that there are some legitimately bad people out there...however, much like Yellowstone above, it's also made very clear that humans Had To Be Sharp to survive a much harsher world, and the great tragedy underlying the story is that it's very clear humanity and ponykind could accomplish so many amazing things together (and have), but some adamantly refuse to believe it's possible. At the same time though, it's also made clear that the majority of the ponies (including TCB!Celestia herself) were brainwashed into hating humanity because the story's Bigger Bad is engineering a plot to punish the whole human race as revenge for being beaten by one single human in the distant past.

Shadow: I made a promise to a girl I loved named Maria. I forgot that promise and I nearly wiped out an entire race because of it. You despise humans... and yet a human taught me the most valuable lesson of all; there are still things worth fighting for.

This is one of the main themes (arguably the main theme) of the movie. Even if the Pax had worked perfectly, it still would've been wrong to stifle the human emotional range for the sake of peace.

Also Mal points out our flaws (Sins) are what keeps humans from just laying down and dying.

Equilibrium takes a similar approach. The entire reason for the plot was because human emotions were a flaw and the cause of 'man's inhumanity to man.' The ending, while portrayed positively, never exactly comes clear on whether restoring human emotion is a good thing.

Deconstructed in The World's End. It turns out that humanity is the least civilized species in the galaxy, and the Network is trying to bring humanity to a level where it could be brought into the galactic community. However, to do so they have to remove anyone who doesn't want to be part of the Network; and because humanity doesn't like being told what to do, the Network need to replace a lot of people in an attempt to make them more acceptable to the galactic community . Arguably, the point of Gary, Andrew & Steven's rebuttal is that "Humans are special because they are flawed".

In The Giver, all emotions have been evolved out of humanity in order for it to overcome its flaws, and from a totalitarian standpoint it works-but as Jonas and the Giver show the Community, emotions are what make life worth it and are part of what make us special.

Literature

Used in Stranger in a Strange Land. Compared to Martians, Humans are less intelligent, more violent, and less powerful. However, with a little wisdom from Mars courtesy of Michael, Humans can become immortal, psychic, spiritually peaceful and sexually polyamorous. It's a bit of an Author Tract, but not an unpleasant one.

In the Malazan Book of the Fallen series, the Crippled God uses this as a premise for his cults of salvation. Unfortunately, rather than delivering the message that mortals can overcome their flaws to do good, the religion is a worship of suffering and degradation.

This is lampshaded by the Neanderthals literally having bred out of their own population all the negative traits by a program of enforced sterilizations over thousands of years (there is also one example involving domestic violence wherein this system is shown to utterly and totally fail).

In Alan Dean Foster's The Damned trilogy humanity is discovered by an alliance of super-civilized alien species who are being forced to fight a war against their will. Compared to them we are portrayed as barely civilized, warlike, violence-crazed and brutish, and indeed our love for inflicting death and destruction makes us the perfect soldiers. However we're also capable of great things, and many humans try to control their instincts and strive for more than just being the alliance's grunts.

British statesman Lord Chesterfield in Letters to His Son: "In the mass of mankind, I fear, there is too great a majority of fools and, knaves; who, singly from their number, must to a certain degree be respected, though they are by no means respectable. And a man who will show every knave or fool that he thinks him such, will engage in a most ruinous war, against numbers much superior to those that he and his allies can bring into the field. Abhor a knave, and pity a fool in your heart; but let neither of them, unnecessarily, see that you do so." (letter 60)

James Herbert's The Rats subverts expectations by not letting a hero-figure arise to save the day. Without exception, all the human characters in the book are flawed, limited, rather depressingly seedy and completely out of their depth.

The Wheel of Time is an almost textbook example, to the point where this trope is built into the cosmology of the series. Eliminating the Dark One would lead to a soporifically dull world in which all humans are mindless automatons, and as the Dark One himself points out, this in itself would be a victory for him. Ultimately the protagonist is forced to leave the world's cosmology in balance, and it is implied this is all anyone will ever be able to do.

In Pact, Alexis, one of a community of starving artists based out of Toronto, takes this as her view of humanity. People, she argues, are fundamentally damaged—by life and by their own individual traumas. She takes this belief as her inspiration for helping others, since she wants to be one of the ones that does a net value of good for the rest instead of a net evil.

Despite shouting "Humanity Is Superior!" humans are most certainly not. One episode has aliens use Crichton's memory to simulate the possible outcome of revealing themselves to humanity in order to seek asylum. It doesn't end well. However, Crichton does become one of the most useful shipmates on Moya because of his ignorance and scientific training. It helps he was stir crazy at appropriate times.

Even more than that, it's Crichton's (and humanity's) persistence in the face of the toughest odds that set them apart from other species. It is viewed as a flaw by many, that humans are so ignorant they don't know when they're beat, but that characteristic is what kept Crichton and his shipmates alive for so long.

The Ancients (despite being humanity's progenitors) and the Nox, super advanced alien races in the Stargate Verse, seemed to hold the fact that humanity was flawed against the SG-C, seizing on the slightest issue to deliver some moralizing message or condemnation (sometimes appropriate to the situation, but often not). Made worse by the Ancients being a bunch of expletives anyway. By way of contrast the Asgard were both friendly and helpful despite knowing humanity was flawed, likely because unlike the other two they admitted they too had flaws. O'Neill once gave a heartfelt speech to the effect of 'we will mess up a lot as a species, but we are out here with you now and we are trying our best'. As he made it to the Asgard they were very approving.

Seems to be the Doctor's view of humanity in Doctor Who, as Earth is his "favorite/pet planet" so to speak, but will turn around and ridicule humans about their shortcomings should the situation be extreme enough.

The Doctor: Human beings. You are amazing. Hah! Thank you. Zachary Cross Flane: Not at all. The Doctor: But apart from that you're completely mad. You should pack your bags, get back in that ship and fly for your lives.

This is how Jor-El views humans, and his spirit bemoans that Clark Kent was raised by humans and thus, thinks like one. One of the only reasons why he did not give up on humanity completely, was because Jonathan Kent's father offered him food and shelter when he visited Earth in the 1960s (even super powered Kryptonians need to eat and sleep). The message on Kal-El's ship:

On this third planet from this star Sol, you will be a god among men. They are a flawed race. Rule them with strength, my son. That is where your greatness lies.

It should be noted that the A.I. of Jor-El believes this, not the real Jor-El. Reason being is that he created the A.I. version of himself without any of his own flaws - which, in this case, meant emotions. Considering how he later warms up to humanity as a whole, displays emotion and states that Clark's destiny is to be a hero, not a conqueror, suggests that this might have been manipulation on the A.I.'s part.

For a while Brainiac masquerades as Clark's history professor. In one episode he goes into a spiel in class that lists various examples of humans' willingness to betray their friends. At the end of the episode, Clark admits humans aren't perfect and are certainly capable of greed and treachery. We're also capable of honor and compassion.

In Babylon 5, all the races are flawed. Discovering how truly flawed even the "superior" races are is a major element of the myth arc.

Person of Interest: Root believes this without believing there's anything redeemable about humans.

The Sopranos, in which selfishness, myopia and dysfunction are portrayed as the constants of the human condition.

As in the movie "sequel" Serenity, in Firefly the flawed nature of humanity is one of the central themes of the series.

Mal: Mercy is the mark of a great man. (Pokes Atherton Wing with sword.) Guess I'm just a good man. (Pokes him again.) Well, I'm all right.

Religion

This is the basis for the Jewish tradition of the Lamed Vavniks, or "Thirty Six": it's believed that there have never been fewer than thirty six righteous men and women, and they're the ones who justify the whole of humanity before the eyes of God. That's it: Yahweh tolerates His flawed children because there are always at least 36 of them who are "good enough"; the implication being that, if the righteous were ever to fall below this number, He would give up on humanity and destroy everyone (Yay)

Tabletop Games

This is the general feeling of New Horizon. Humans did some terrible things and had to leave Earth, but now that they're on a new planet they have a grand future!

Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000: The Chaos gods are usually agreed to be the worst of Mankind's enemies. Unfortunately, since they are basically made of emotion (rage, love, desire and hope), humanity keeps fueling them even when defeating their agents in the material plane.

In every iteration of Dungeons & Dragons before Third Edition, the distinguishing feature of Humans was that they had no distinguishing features. Every other race had a laundry list of special abilities. The tradeoff for this was that humans were the only race that could be any class (in fact, they were the only race that could be paladins at all) and could reach the maximum level in every class. The explanation generally given for this was that being generally unexceptional and shorter-lived than other races caused humans to be more ambitious and faster learners. In Third through Fourth Edition, humans have been given special racial abilities, but they tend to make humans more versatile instead of more powerful (for example, in 4E, humans get +2 to any one stat of their choice, while every other race gets +2 to two stats, but one of them is fixed and the other is either also fixed or a choice of two stats).

System Shock: Lo-lo-look at you, hacker. A p-p-pathetic creature of meat and bone, panting and sweating as you r-run through my corridors-s. H-h-how can you challenge a perfect, immortal machine?

In many ways a staple of Shin Megami Tensei games. While the Neutral endings (the ones most heavily focusing on the potential of Humanity, as opposed to delivering ourselves into the easy path promised by the power of the Lord or the temptations of the demons) are presented as the most optimistic of the lot, one must remember that both YHVH and Lucifer were born of Humanity's own Order Versus Chaos conflict - until the race finishes sorting out its messes for good, both will forever be reborn over and over, and their war shall never end.

In the Persona series, every major divine being is an Anthropomorphic Personification of something within the human heart (be it our good constructive parts (Philemon) or our fear of yet subconsious longing for death (Nyx). The Aesop of the franchise can pretty much be said to be that we humans are flawed but that we can overcome them.

In Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles,Manuela comes to the conclusion that the ability to feel pain (mental/emotional pain at our mistakes, in particular) is what makes a person human, and that's a good thing, at least as opposed to being a super tough (but mindless and destructive) zombie monster.

While it first appears to set up a Humans Are the Real Monsters message, Eien no Aselia in the end opts for this. You have your instantly nice and understanding characters like Yuuto and Lesteena, your neutralish characters like Kouin and the populace at large and finally the evil people like Shun and Soma. The populace eventually grows to accept Yuuto and the spirits and see them as heroes, while Shun gets a decent motivation in a New Game+ and a Sympathy for the Devil moment.

This is very apparent in L.A. Noire, what with the scores of less-than perfect people Cole encounters. This trope is even invoked by Roy Earle, of all people ("Everyone has their vices, even you, Cole."). Even Cole ends up having an affair and leaving his wife and kids, and even then, his past was hardly spotless.

This seems to be a major theme in The World Ends with You. Ultimately humans are flawed creatures obsessed with themselves until they clash with other people and their viewpoints, show with Neku's character growth. The act of having to clash itself suggests that only conflict causes humans to grow in any meaningful way.

In Dm C Devil May Cry, Mundus mocks Dante's desire to free humanity from demons by claiming that humans had freedom before he came, and in his words "They fought. They killed. They starved. I brought order." Vergil also believes this is true, and wishes to rule humanity alongside Dante after Mundus is defeated. He believes humans are like children that need to be protected from themselves. Dante counters this by pointing out that they would never have defeated Mundus without the aid of Kat, a human.

In Shin Super Robot Wars, Master Asia, who happens to be an agent of the Dug Government in this game, met Domon Kasshu's father Professor Kasshu and Char Aznable and figures the latter was where his problems started, coming short on the heels of the signing of the Luna Treaty that guarantees independence and sovereignty for the Earth, Moon, and space colonies. This treaty was enough to bring peace to the war-weary humans, but could not by itself remove the scars of the war. Char, who loved humanity more than anyone, also hated it more, having sacrificed numerous followers and taken many lives himself. Since he possessed vast influence and resources, Master Asia treated him as a representative of humanity. He was led to believe that humans were unstable, destructive beings, and decided to manipulate Kasshu to help nip any potential for trouble in the bud.

In The Elder Scrolls series the Daedra are of this opinion with regards to the mortal races. They perceive mortals as weak, foolish, and doomed from birth. What they cannot understand is why, despite knowing their lives are finite, mortals do not despair.

One of the biggest themes of the MOTHER series. Porky symbolizes humanity's sins, while the heroes represent its ability to overcome them and be better. Who wins in the end? Eh...you decide.

A major point of the Guilty Gear series, and very evident in some of the character's back stories:

The main protagonist, Sol Badguy, was once a genius scientist who created the Gears and was against his will turned into one himself. Wracked with enormous guilt note Geddit? over the destruction his creations caused, he has undertaken a personal mission to hunt down and destroy every last Gear in existence. Over time, his rivalry with Ky Kiske turned into a solid friendship, and he also became close to Ky's wife Dizzy, and his son, Sin, who are both Gears. Much of his Character Development in Xrd is about him trying to overcome his obsession with his past.

Dr. Baldhead was once a good doctor who never failed to treat the sick. Until one day, when a young girl died on his operating table. His guilt drove him insane and he became a serial killer, killing people with a giant scalpel. One day, the girl appeared to him in a vision and told him that her death wasn't his fault and that she was assassinated. Baldhead had a Freak Out and disappeared. Some time later, rumours of a talented but eccentric healer wearing a paper bag on his head circulated. The man refers to himself simply as Faust, but he's actually a reformed Dr. Baldhead, taking time to atone for his past by using his healing powers and also tracking down the young girl's killers. He grapples with his Ax-Crazy inner-self and admits to still having a fondness for bloodshed, but he manages to keep it under control.

Pretty hard to believe that Chipp Zanuff, the idiotic goofball who jumps around shouting Gratuitous Japanese, was once a drug dealer. He believes his ninja master saved him from his tortured life, and so he's a decent guy now. By Xrd, he's become the president of a small country.

Paz: The Court isn't a big monster that does as it pleases. Es a collection of people, working to do what they think is right.

The Order of the Stick takes an interesting stance on this - when Roy dies, he's told that since he's mortal, it's not really reasonable to expect him to stay perfectly straight-and-narrow all the time, and making the effort is what's really important. This is repeated when he's allowed into the afterlife even though he didn't fulfill his father's Blood Oath; because he kept trying, he gets a pass, where his father consciously abandoned the quest, and is thus stuck in limbo until a member of his family defeats Xykon. Thus it's less "Humans suck because they are flawed" and more "Humans are flawed, but that's okay, because it doesn't have to define them."

Real Life

Go look up the life of your real life heroes. They will have a flaw or several. They can still be great men or women. They are also human. Human history is full of this.

There are some radical schools of thought claiming that all human flaws are only considered such due to societal pressure and should be cultivated rather than suppressed as they are the true and 'natural' traits of humanity.

This is heavily debated in metaphysical circles. Some religions, for instance Christianity, argue we are inherently flawed (to various degrees). This position is called Original Sin. But many philosophies and some religions disagree with this premise. Even within Christianity itself, this is debated.

Of course, it should also be pointed out that despite humanity's flawed and broken nature, all but the most utterly cynical branches of Christianity and other faiths and philosophies still point out that humanity inherently possesses value and virtue as well.

Of course, one can empirically observe many flaws in many humans. But this is a less strong claim than humans are inherently flawed.

Within certain forms of Buddhism, this trope, combined with Humans Are Special, is the exact reason for why it is preferrable to be reborn as a human: All other possible beings one can be reborn as are either too flawed (ghosts are primarily only driven by their base needs, beasts lack man's intelligence and longevity) or not flawed enough (the Deva can live for millions of years, have all their worldly desires fulfilled with a thought and don't have any reason to improve themselves). Humans, however, are, with their short lives and shortcomings, just flawed enough to strive for improvement and just wise enough to achieve enlightenment during their lives.

Certain philosophies hold that humans would not be flawed if they would just return to some larger cosmic purpose that our ancestors abandoned. Several sages have even posited that we can progressively lose or overcome our flaws on the way back to said purpose.

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